Jerome Champagne is a former French Diplomat from 1983 to 1998; he left his employment in politics and turned to football in 1999, serving as an executive in FIFA until 2010. His job role in FIFA was international adviser to the President until 2002 where he then became Deputy Secretary General until 2005 and then was employed as Delegate of the President until 2007 where he was finally then employed to be Director of International Relations until 2010, Quite the CV you can see.
He then left FIFA to become a commissioner for Dakar, State of Palestine, Kosovo, Cyprus, Turkey and Lubumbashi. His main purpose for the role was to spread the name of the countries and get them recognized within football, if you have heard of the Countries in football terms on the list, then he has successfully done his job.
He has now turned to FIFA presidency and will run for the role; the election is scheduled for June 2015. His Proposals if he was to be in charge are as follows:
• Quotas for foreign players
• Implementing rugby’s rule where only the captain can talk to the referee with a free-kick advanced 10 yards for any dissent
• Issuing a ‘Orange card’ system where the punishment is to send players to a sin-bin
• Abolishing the ‘triple punishment’ rule where a player who prevents a goal scoring opportunity in the penalty areas concedes a spot-kick, is sent off and also suspended
• All FIFA presidential candidates taking part in live debates on television and in front of the six continental confederations
• Making public the salary of the FIFA president and leading officials
Pele has backed Champagne stating “We need a different FIFA, more democratic, more respected, which behaves better and which does more.” From one of the best players to have played football, it’s quite the backing, but will his new rules be positive to the game or a negative?
Let’s start with Quotas for foreign players. Not much has been said on the proposition so I can only speculate. I believe the main idea for this is to have only a certain amount of players in each team; this comes with positives and negatives. With less foreign players in a club it leaves the home grown players to come through, which can only be a positive internationally. Negatives include why don’t we want the best players playing for your league? Real Madrid’s latest starting eleven had only four Spanish players and Arsenal only had one British player in their line-up. Fans want to see the best players for their club, if their British or foreign should not make a difference.
The rugby rule where only a captain can speak to the Referee and can be punished for dissent by pushing a free kick ten yards forward is a brilliant idea for football, it stops the insults that referees get and gives them a power which they’ve never had. Referees in rugby are treated with a lot of respect because a ten yard penalty can be the difference in scoring or missing.
The Orange Card system is a difficult one to impose, Champagne’s theory towards it is that ‘players could be sin-binned for two or three minutes for in-between fouls committed in the heat of the moment.’ An example being of a ‘player who had already been booked then receiving a second yellow card for taking off his shirt to celebrate a goal.’ Instead of issuing a second yellow card, he would receive an orange card and sit out of the game two to three minutes (that would be determined if the rule was set in place). As not a lot has been spoken on the rules in detail, I can only speculate that the orange card will be used for fouls or dissent which isn’t worthy of a red card. I disagree with the orange card system as players know the problems they face if they were to take off their shirt or over-celebration, as it’s in the rules, players should know better than to do that.
Another issue is the player who does it can only be viewed badly. Not many players have been sent off since the rule has been implemented where they’ve taken off their shirt knowing their already on a yellow card, so emplacing the orange card, would it give players more opportunity to do it? I don’t think it will.
Abolishing the ‘triple punishment’ rule where a player who prevents a goal scoring opportunity in the penalty areas concedes a spot-kick, is sent off and also suspended is a difficult one, the team who are ‘rewarded’ with the foul where they were denied a goal scoring opportunity would feel aggrieved if the player was then not dismissed but the ‘punished’ team would feel that it was punishment enough to have the penalty against them.
If a player was to foul opposition just outside the area where he was denied a goal scoring opportunity, would it then be fair to send him off? Fine lines in football go a long way in a game and if you commit the crime you should pay the punishment and if that means being sent off, then so be it.
FIFA candidates taking part in live debates is a brilliant idea, it’s done within politics and there hasn’t been an issue with that so this is something which should have been implemented a while ago. Football is an game where everyone can watch and that should be implemented within FIFA.
Making public the salary of FIFA employees is something which won’t mean a lot within football but it is good to know. Again, in politics they announce the salary of everyone, so in football it can only be positive.
Jerome Champagne has a lot of ideas to improve football, some are great, some don’t need to be implemented, but since 1998 we’ve had Sepp Blatter as the president, change needs to happen for the game to evolve.